US Divorcees: Demographics

Delivered February 11, 2020. Contributor: Sunali T.

Goals

To determine the demographics of divorcees in the US which support the premise that "there are some people who are asset rich but cash poor who would want to protect themselves from a divorce, child support litigation, or spousal maintenance litigation."

Early Findings

Age

According to Wilkinson & Finkbeiner (Family Law Attorneys), the median duration of first marriages that end in divorce among males is 7.8 years and 7.9 years for females.

Since the median age of first marriage is 29.8 for males and 27.8 for females based on the data from the US Census Bureau, we can calculate the median age of divorce among males and females as 37.6 (29.8+7.8) and 35.7 (27.8+7.9) respectively.

Income

According to Gardner & Lewis LLP, people making less than $20,000 a year divorce at the highest rate and this income bracket accounts for 39% of divorces.

Wilkinson & Finkbeiner confirms this finding by stating that "an annual income of over $50,000 can decrease the risk of divorce by as much as 30% versus those with an income of under $25k."

Ethnicity

Steve W Marsee (Attonory at Law) has cited findings which show that Native Americans have the highest divorce rate with 45% of men and 44% of women being divorced or have been married more than once.

The survey also found that among White Americans, 38% of women and 36% of men had been divorced or married more than once, followed by Black Americans (42% for both genders), Latinos (30% of women and 27% of men), and Asians (18% of women and 16% of men).

Education

An article from Business Insider states that the chance of getting divorced is higher for people with lower education, with over half of the marriages of those who did not complete high school ending in divorce, compared with only 30% of college graduates.

Children

Business Insider further states that, whetherornot a couple has children greatly impacts their chance of getting divorced. An article from Divorce Source reports that among American couples who divorce, 66% are childless.

Proposed next steps:

You need to be the project owner to select a next step.

We can provide further research into other factors that are associated with divorces in the US such as profession, type of job (full time, part-time, etc), job security, religion, and the age gap of the couple.

We also can conduct further research to collect evidence (2-3 insights) to support the premise that "there are some people who are asset rich but cash poor who would want to protect themselves from a divorce, child support litigation, or spousal maintenance litigation."